Thank you for your support, it took me many days to make this guide! - Ryan

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Resources to Get Started

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Skill Level

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1

Eclipse IDE Setup

Beginner

You need what's called an IDE to get started coding Android Apps. IDE is a fancy way of saying "the program you do the coding in", this program helps you code by assisting you with error checking, code suggestions, etc.

To get started for Android, I suggested reading Google's own Introduction to Android development. It's a great primer and should help you get your footing before branching out into more specific topics.

Often you want to prompt the user the first time they run your app, this is exactly how you do that! This guide demonstrates how to use an Android app's preferences to store settings like the first run of the app.

The Android Design guide by Google is a great place to start for layout design advice. Approach layout design with this in mind: you start with a layout defined by Google and follow the principles outlined in this guide to customize it for your app. Pay attention to the rules in this guide, they ensure your app looks great while also displaying properly on all Android phones.

Nine patch images are images used by Android to provide flexible graphics that can match any screen size or pixel density. Nine patches are a very easy way to create a flexible layout, you should read this early on.

Android has a specific file called the Manifest which determines what permissions your app has, how it interacts with other apps and more. You must understand this, it's fundamental to any Android app.

The Activity is the life of all Android apps. The Activity is the view or screen you see on your phone, you MUST understand how Acitivities are created, resumed, destroyed, etc. You will use these events to trigger different aspects of your app's functionality.

Android has some quirks about using Threads. For instance, any changes to the UI's views must be done on the main Thread and network operations can't be performed on the main Thread. Get a taste for Threading in Android here.

While for most apps Tasks (drawn from the idea of multi-tasking) don't need to be messed with, when it comes to Widget clicks or Notification clicks you MUST understand how Tasks work, this is the best guide for this!

Notifications are super important for apps to deliver meaningful alerts to the user. Notifications should be kept simple, read this guide to gain an understanding of notifications and the appropriate style to use.

Familiarize yourself with this guide at the beginning and end of app development, you must be aware how ads will effect your layouts. After polishing your app, read the introduction first and then follow this to add ads to your app.

Google gives you everything you need to wrap your app in a License, this is free authentication provided by Google and it's not that hard to implement! Add licensing to all of your apps before publishing!

Once done your graphics, come up with a short write-up (<1,000 characters) for your app, stating its key benefits and features, and how it solves user problems, and come here to create your Google Play App profile (publish your app to the store).